Jurassic turtle discovered in Thailand

From The Independent in South Africa:

New dinosaur-era turtle species

June 23 2009 at 08:01AM

Bangkok – Two 150-million-year-old turtle fossils recently found in north-east Thailand have been classified as a new Jurassic-era species, clinching the kingdom’s claim to land-turtle ancestry in South-East Asia, media reports said Tuesday.

The two fossils, believed to date back to the Jurassic era more than 150 million years ago when dinosaurs roamed the earth, were found in 2005 by the government’s Mineral Resource Department in Mukdahan province, 450 kilometres north-east of Bangkok.

The official discovery of the new species was published in the London-based Geological Society journal earlier this year under the name Basilochelyes macro bios [sic. Basilochelys macrobios], the Bangkok Post newspaper reported.

The world’s oldest turtle fossil, the 200-million-year-old Progonochelyes [sic. Proganochelys], was found in nearby Khon Kaen province.

Henodus, Triassic turtle-like reptile: here.

Hypsognathus was a small reptile lived during the late Triassic (215-200 million years ago) in the wetlands of eastern North America; here, its fossils were found in New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Connecticut, in US, and in Nova Scotia, in Canada. It was an anapsid reptile, i.e., featured by a compact and massive skull with only two lateral openings for the eyes and two for the nostrils.

Related articles

• Dinomania: 9 Places In and Around NYC for Dinosaur-Obsessed Kids
• Jurassic dinosaur discovery in Wales
• Wales Joins World’s Club Of Dinosaur Countries With Fossil Discovery
• Hampshire experts conclude newly discovered dinosaur species dates back 200 million years
• Bush-crickets’ ultrasonic hearing abilities, new research
• Svalbard Jurassic giant reptiles, other fossils

Tortured Kenyans sue British government

This video from Britain says about itself:

1000s of Kenyans tortured by British Colonial Government

8 April 2011

As four Kenyans who allege that they were amongst thousands tortured at the hands of British Colonial Government give a moving testimony as they began their fight for an official apology at the High Court.

From the British, conservative, Daily Mail:

Five Mau Mau veterans sue UK Government over ‘torture’ by Britain

By Daily Mail Reporter

Last updated at 8:04 PM on 23rd June 2009

Veterans of Kenya‘s independence war began a High Court claim for compensation against the Government today, alleging inhuman and barbaric treatment in British-run detention camps.

The men and women, now in their 70s and 80s, say they witnessed the murder of detainees, suffered torture and were hung upside down as they were beaten.

One man claims he was castrated with pliers in 1954. Women say they were sexually abused.

Five Kenyans – three men and two women – flew to London today to issue their claims in person.

They were allegedly among thousands forced into camps during the Mau Mau uprising against British colonial power.

The Kenyan Human Rights Commission has said 90,000 Kenyans were executed, tortured or maimed during the resulting crackdown and 160,000 were detained in appalling conditions.

Britain is accused of giving camp guards a ‘blank cheque’ to get detainees to recant their oaths of loyalty to the Mau Mau movement.

Up to 2,000 more detainees are said to be pursuing claims in Kenya and will be closely monitoring the High Court test cases. …

Ndiku Mutua, one of the five, said: ‘I live with the physical and mental scars of what happened to me. Not a day goes by when I do not think of these terrible events. At last I can tell my story and at last I can hope for justice from the British courts.’

Mr Mutua said that in 1954 he was arrested, severely beaten before being castrated with pliers, at Lukenya detention centre.

Another claimant, Paulo Nzili, also said he was castrated. Wambugu Wa Nyingi said he was tied upside down by the feet and beaten and was personally involved in an incident in Hola camp where 11 detainees were allegedly beaten to death.

Jane Muthoni Mara and Susan Ngondi said they were sexually assaulted. …

A former district officer during the Emergency, John Nottingham, 81, who is originally from Coventry, told how he saw an old man being attacked.

‘It was clear that there was a major piece of evil going on in Kenya, and I have learned more about it in recent years,’ he said. …

Mr Nyingi said after the news conference: ‘At one camp, called Hola, they had locked us up in an isolated space.

‘There were 12 of us and they killed 11 and I was the only survivor.’

He said that independence for the country in 1963 had not healed the wounds left by harsh treatment.

‘I still feel angry, I haven’t found a place, politically and economically, and I don’t own land.

‘I participated on the basis the land the British seized would be given back, but I was left as a poor person.’

He showed scars on his knees where he was allegedly beaten by troops under the command of a British colonial officer.

He added: ‘I didn’t have the same strength as a man of my age should have, after leaving the camp.’

See also here.

Barack Obama’s grandfather ‘tortured by the British’ during Kenya’s Mau Mau rebellion, here.

Eisenhower, Eden, and British repression in Kenya: here.

Related articles

• Letter: Justice for Victims of Sexual Abuse
• Kenyan monument for people tortured during British colonialism
• Survivors of sexual abuse find support in online ‘anonymity’
• Kenyan torture victims’ compensation after fifty years?
• Ebola, Africa’s history and present | Dear Kitty. Some blog
• Dutch clerical sexual child abuse cover-up update
• Sexually abusive Catholic priest relocated, not fired

Roman age quarry discovered in Palestine

This video is called Ancient Holy Land Quarry Discovered.

A Roman age quarry was recently discovered by Israeli archaeologists near Jericho, West Bank, in Palestine.

Roman theatre unearthed in Israel: here.

World’s Biggest Cave Found in Vietnam: here. Photos here.

Related articles

• Compassionate Listening in Israel & Palestine (kolaleph.org)
• Medieval elite ate birds, new research (dearkitty1.wordpress.com)
• ‘Secret’ Labyrinth of Tunnels Under Rome Mapped (livescience.com)

Hope for Seychelles paradise-flycatcher

From BirdLife:

Hope for Seychelles‘ last Critically Endangered species

23-06-2009

The first Seychelles Paradise-flycatcher Terpsiphone corvina chicks to fledge successfully outside La Digue Island, Seychelles for over 60 years is flying on Denis Island, a coral island in the inner Seychelles group. The newly-fledged birds are flying well, very noisy, and being fed by their parents –”typical normal and healthy flycatcher chicks”, according to Nirmal Shah, Director of BirdLife Partner Nature Seychelles, the Species Guardian for the paradise-flycatcher.

The paradise-flycatcher is the only Seychelles species still listed as Critically Endangered. Formerly Critically Endangered Species including Seychelles Magpie-robin Copsychus sechellarum, Seychelles White-eye Zosterops modestus and Seychelles Scops-owl Otus insularis have all been downlisted as a result of conservation action. The population of the paradise-flycatcher has been steadily increasing in recent years. In 1996 there were 69-83 pairs; this had risen to 104-139 pairs by the last comprehensive survey in 2000.

Seychelles Paradise-flycatchers, probably “overspill” birds from the population on La Digue, are regularly seen on neighbouring islands, but have been unable to establish viable populations. The reintroduction to Denis Island is part of a three-year project, funded by the UK Government’s Darwin Initative, and carried out by Nature Seychelles together with the Durrell Institute of Conservation and Ecology (DICE) and the collaboration of other organisations and the Seychelles Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources.

Seychelles Paradise-flycatcher requires mature stands of indigenous badamier Terminalia catappa and takamaka Calophyllum innophylum trees. However, its habitat requirements may be less strict than previously thought. As the population on La Digue has increased, a number of birds have established territories in open woodland with housing encroachment, and an increasing number of tree species are used for nesting.

Nature Seychelles began ecosystem restoration on Denis Island in 2002, with funding from two Global Environment Facility projects facilitated by the World Bank and with the collaboration of the island owners, and this work has continued under the current Darwin Initiative-funded flycatcher project. The island is free of alien predators.

Related articles

• Sea level rise accelerating – study
• Seychelles paradise flycatchers helped by schoolchildren
• Good Seychelles conservation news
• Thought wiped out by climate change, ‘extinct’ snail rediscovered in Seychelles
• Rare seahorses discovery in the Philippines
• Carrying the Sun From the Seychelles to the North Pole
• Marine Stewardship Council: Living in fisheries fantasy land

Civilians suffer in wars

This video is called Beyond Belief – Afghan Womens’ Hardship and Hunger.

From Maktoob Business in the United Arab Emirates:

Poll shows civilian suffering in war

Jun 23, 2009 at 01:21

A Red Cross survey of eight war-torn countries has found that more than half of the civilians polled were forced to flee their homes – while in Afghanistan and Liberia torture was a common experience.

The opinion poll, released Tuesday, was conducted for the International Committee of the Red Cross among 4,000 people in Afghanistan, Colombia, Congo, Georgia, Haiti, Lebanon, Liberia and the Philippines.

It is part of a campaign to highlight the impact of modern conflicts on civilians.

Nowhere was the sense of direct suffering more acute than in Afghanistan, – which has been gripped by conflict for three decades – and in Liberia, where brutal civil wars ravaged the country between 1989 and 2003.

In both nations, more than 40 percent of those polled said they had been tortured.

An average of 56 percent in the eight countries surveyed said they had been forced to flee their home at some point in time.

That figure rose to nine people in 10 in Liberia; and more than three-quarters of Afghans.

“These figures represent millions of people who are struggling to provide for their childen, who have been forced to flee their villages under threat, or who live in constant fear that someone they care for will be killed, assaulted or disappear,” said ICRC Director of Operations Pierre Kraehenbuehl.

“That’s very disturbing.”

Lost relatives, looting, injury, and imprisonment were commonplace experiences in Afghanistan and Liberia – as well as a sense of humiliation that was shared in nearly equal measure by 51 percent of Haitians.

Despite concerns about their own livelihood, the greatest single fear that emerged from the war victims was that of losing a loved one or a relative: on average, that fear was cited by 38 percent.

Corruption emerged as the biggest single barrier to receiving aid for 59 percent of those polled – rising to more than 80 percent in Colombia, Liberia and the Philippines.

The opinion poll was carried out to mark the 150th anniversary this week of the Battle of Solferino, which inspired the Swiss founding father of the Red Cross, Henry Dunant, to set up the movement to help war victims.

“When you look at Solferino, where only one civilian was reportedly killed, and you compare it with modern day conflicts in Afghanistan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Iraq, Sri Lanka, Gaza or Somalia, you find that warfare takes a more widespread physical and emotional toll on civilians,” said Kraehenbuehl.

The poll was conducted by the polling firm IPSOS among a representative sample of about 500 people in each of the countries, between February and April 2009 – but sometimes only in major cities because of the dangers involved.

In Afghanistan, the capital Kabul, and some other cities, usually suffered far less from war than the rest of the country. Which may mean that really representative Afghan figures would have been even worse.

The poll had a margin of error of four to five percent.

See also here.

Following a 10-month investigation, a European Union report has found Georgia the aggressor in its 2008 war with Russia, directly refuting claims made not only by the Georgia government, but also by its backers in Washington and the US media: here.

John Spargo, first US neoconservative?

This video from Britain is called Adam Curtis – The Power of Nightmares [Part 1: “Baby It’s Cold Outside”] (2004). The first part of the series explains the origin of Islamism and Neo-Conservatism.

Neoconservatism today is often said to include George W. Bush in the USA, and the Stephen Harper administration in Canada.

From Lenin’s Tomb blog in Britain:

Markku Ruotsila‘s impressive new biography of John Spargo is an incisive assessment of one of the earliest architects of neoconservatism.

Spargo, a British socialist who spent most of his life in the United States, had moved gradually to the right of the socialist movement, advocating a gradualist and anti-revolutionary interpretation of Marxism. Having defended the American intervention in WWI, he was an early and avid critic of the Bolshevik Revolution. It was Spargo who composed the Colby Note that formalised the Wilson administration’s anti-communist doctrine, and engaged in a political alliance with Benito Mussolini which he maintained through Italy’s Fascist years on account of Mussolini‘s intransigent anti-communism.

A harsh critic of the Roosevelt administration’s ‘New Deal’ and its recognition of the USSR, he moved to the hard right in his domestic politics, supporting the Dies Commission and McCarthy, and later supporting first Richard Nixon then Barry Goldwater in the 1964 elections.

This review examines Spargo’s journey to the right in the light, not only of the peculiar Hyndmanite Marxism into which he was initially inducted and the reformist socialism to which he later graduated, but also of his social Darwinism, his support for colonialism, and his perceptions of the global racial order. I argue that Ruotsila, while providing an unprecedented glimpse into a neglected prehistory of neoconservatism, is mistaken to see Spargo’s transition as a logical and linear progression in which he successfully preserved the core of his ‘Social Gospel‘ even as he became a Republican activist. He also understates, I will maintain, the role of Spargo’s racial concerns in the fervent anti-communism that he espoused after 1917.

The latest batch of White House tape recordings from January and February 1973, released Tuesday by the Nixon Presidential Library, give a taste of the political atmosphere in which Richard M. Nixon conducted the office of the presidency: here.

Briefly, in the nastiest of times, Roy Cohn did certain things that made him worthy of a historical footnote. In the eighteen months he served as Senator Joseph McCarthy‘s chief counsel, he contributed in some degree to the establishment of what Nicholas von Hoffman calls our ongoing era of two dreadful isms: loyaltyism and securityism: here.

Related articles

• Pope and Mussolini were allies
• 15th February 2015
• January 3, 1925: Benito Mussolini Assumes Dictatorial Powers in Italy
• Russia, the new nazi Germany?
• Hitler and Mussolini coffee creamer in Switzerland
• Dictator Mussolini’s secret bunker discovered

Moroccan elephant ancestor discovered

By Jeanna Bryner, of LiveScience, in the USA:

Fossils of oldest elephant relative found

60-million-year-old remains show much smaller tusks than current animals’

June 22, 2009

Scientists have discovered fossilized remains of the oldest known elephant relative, dating back 60 million years.

The fossils were found in Morocco. Called Eritherium azzouzorum, the animal would not have looked much like an elephant. It was just 1.6 to 2 feet (50 to 60 cm) long and weighed 9 to 11 pounds (4 to 5 kg).

The animal’s relation to elephants was determined via analysis of the specimen’s teeth and skull. While it lacked a trunk, the animal had an enlarged first incisor, which researcher Emmanuel Gheerbrant of the National Museum of Natural History in Paris says represents a primitive tusk. It was much smaller than the tusks of today’s elephants.

“The trunk evolved with the modern elephant group, called elephantiform, at the beginning of the Oligocene,” which extends from 33.7 million to 23.8 million years ago, Gheerbrant told LiveScience.

The fossil mammal was found in the same area that yielded the then-oldest elephant relative called Phosphatherium escuilliei, which dated back 55 million years.

The newly identified species extends the record of the Proboscidea order (whose sole survivors today are modern elephants) back to the Late Paleocene.

The research was published in the June 22 issue of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Jon Smith, a scientist at the Kansas Geological Survey, and Stephen Hasiotis, a geologist at the University of Kansas, have demonstrated that soil-inhabiting creatures contracted in size by 30-46 percent during the Palaeocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM). The PETM was a short interval 55 million years ago marked by a spike in the atmosphere’s carbon dioxide levels and global temperatures, conditions being repeated on Earth now: here.

Impact debris and evidence of widespread wildfires around eastern North America suggest that a large space rock whacked Earth around 56 million years ago at the beginning of the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, also known as the PETM, a period of rapid warming and huge increases in carbon dioxide. The event is one of the closest historic analogs to modern global warming and is used to improve predictions of how Earth’s climate and ecosystems will fare in the coming decades: here.

Seventeen species from the Palaeocene and Early Eocene of northern Europe, of which 12 are new, are described belonging to the extinct macroscelidean family Louisinidae, raised here from subfamily rank. These species belong to nine genera, of which five are new. The new genera are Walbeckodon, Berrulestes, Gigarton, Thryptodon, and Prolouisina. The new species are Walbeckodon krumbiegeli, Walbeckodon girardi, Paschatherium levei, Berrulestes phelizoni, Berrulestes pellouini, Berrulestes poirieri, Gigarton meyeri, Gigarton sigogneauae, Gigarton louisi, Thryptodon brailloni, Louisina marci, and Teilhardimys brisswalteri. Prolouisina is erected for ‘Louisina’ atavella Russell, 1964. Cladistic analysis was undertaken to understand the relationships within the Louisinidae and between them and the North American family Apheliscidae, in which they had earlier been included as a subfamily. Louisinidae are shown to be sister group to a clade consisting of Apheliscidae plus Amphilemuridae and part of a paraphyletic and polyphyletic Adapisoricidae, all of which are tentatively considered to be stem members of the order Macroscelidea. The most primitive macroscelidid, Chambius, from the Early Eocene of northern Africa is nested within Apheliscidae when postcranial characters were included, but in a majority of cases within the Louisinidae when postcranial characters were excluded. Most species from northern Europe became extinct at the end of the Palaeocene, although the genus Paschatherium survived for much of the Early Eocene and Teilhardimys survived into the earliest Eocene: here.

Related articles

• Scientists Find Rare Mosquito Containing Blood From Eocene Period
• What’s New(s) 7/04/2014: Definitely not just Torvosaurus
• Elephants Proven Too Intelligent to Be Prey
• Do Elephants Call “Human!” to Alarm Herd Of Approaching Danger?
• For instant climate change, just add one large comet
• Anthracosuchus balrogus: Giant Prehistoric Crocodile Discovered
• Documenting the World’s Oldest Organisms with Photographer Rachel Sussman
• PETM Shocker: When CO2 Levels Doubled 55 Million Years Ago, Global Temperatures May Have Jumped 9°F In 13 Years
• Strange fossil mammal discovery
• Hedgehog fossil discovery in Canada

Japanese dinosaur discovery

T Rex, Warrior or Wimp? See here.

From Bob’s Dinosaurs Blog:

New Tyrannosaur Found in Japan

Monday June 22, 2009

In Japan, dinosaur fossils are about as rare as hen’s teeth. That’s why it’s such exciting news that researchers have found the teeth of a carnivorous dinosaur (likely a type of tyrannosaur) in Tamba, Hyogo Prefecture, embedded in rock strata dating back about 140 million years, to the very start of the Cretaceous period.

Judging by this as-yet-unnamed carnivore’s teeth, it probably measured about 17 feet long–which may prompt some reconsideration about the size of the earliest tyrannosaurs. Previously, it was thought that tyrannosaur precursors like Guanlong and Dilong were only modestly proportioned, plus-sized models like T. Rex appearing much later in the Cretaceous period.